During the retirement phase of the PC life cycle, many users dispose of PCs without properly removing confidential data. This is a serious concern, since the information on these hard disks can then be retrieved by unauthorized people.
Many users think that formatting a hard disk removes and destroys its data, when in fact this data, which can be highly confidential, can still be retrieved from these systems. With most operating systems, files that are deleted are not necessarily erased. In many cases, the only thing erased is the logical link to the file.